TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jackson,C. Kirabo
TI  - Non-Cognitive Ability, Test Scores, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from 9th Grade Teachers in North Carolina
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18624
PY  - 2012
Y2  - December 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18624
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18624.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
C. Kirabo Jackson
Northwestern University
School of Education and Social Policy
2040 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
Tel: 847/467-1803
E-Mail: kirabo-jackson@northwestern.edu
AB  - This paper presents a model where students have cognitive and non-cognitive ability, and a teacher’s effect on long-run outcomes is a combination of her effects on both ability-types. Conditional on cognitive scores, an underlying non-cognitive factor associated with student absences, suspensions, grades, and grade progression, is strongly correlated with long-run educational attainment, arrests, and earnings in survey data. In administrative data, teachers have meaningful causal effects on both cognitive-scores and this non-cognitive factor. Calculations indicate that teacher effects based on test scores alone fail to identify many excellent teachers, and may greatly understate the importance of teachers for adult outcomes.
ER  -